Will Your Dental Prospects Find You in Local Search?

Unless you’re a nationally or internationally known dentist, only the prospects in your market are looking for you. Google is personalizing search results to the user, and one of the ways it does that is by using location. Try it yourself – type “dentists” into Google’s search box and see what results appear.

So, your practice should be among those listed on the first page of results, yes? Not necessarily. There are a number of signals that Google’s web crawlers – bots – are looking for. If the bots don’t find the right signals for your practice, your prospects probably won’t find you.

You’ve certainly heard of search engine optimization. If you’re like most dentists, you’re sick of hearing about it. But what about local search optimization?

Consistency is Key

Google is still the reigning king of search but it’s not the only option by any means. Microsoft sites handle about 24 percent of queries while Yahoo fields around 14 percent. Then there are aggregators like YP.com, various review sites like Yelp, map applications like Apple Maps, and many more.

The information about your practice – in particular your practice name, address, and phone (NAP) – has to be identical across all those platforms. If not, you’ll likely take a serious hit in There are special considerations if you operate more than one location under the same name.

Local Search is Time Consuming and Finicky

You could spend a few days or weeks tracking down every possible location where your NAP appears. That would be a complete waste of your time and talents. You don’t make any money doing SEO work, you make money by seeing patients and solving their dental problems.

You could also hire an outside vendor to optimize your listings across the internet. And then they’d have to do it all again, and again. The internet is expanding and changing constantly with new aggregators and search engines added every month.

The only way to win at the local search engine optimization game is to optimize constantly.

SmartBox’s Local360 Search Optimizationis the Answer

Local360 Search Optimization is a done-for-you, turnkey solution that works with your existing website to ensure you can be found online.

SmartBox will manage your listings on Google, Bing, Apple Maps, YP.com, and many other places around the net. We’ll also get you listed in various directories, including dental-specific directories.

It doesn’t matter where a prospect is searching online. It doesn’t matter what device they’re using. SmartBox will ensure they can find you with Local360 Search Optimization.

Dr. Randy Schmidt is a fan. “SmartBox has been doing local search marketing for us which we’ve gotten 141 calls in the last month from,” he said. “Our staff has been very impressed with all you and your team has done, and our patients now go to our website much more often, about two to three times as often as they used to, which has been incredible for our retention and internal referrals.”

Put Your Local Search Engine Optimization on Autopilot!

You didn’t go to dental school to fiddle with SEO work. Stay focused on doing the dentistry. SmartBox will make sure your prospects find you.